Life in the USSR

From my early childhood, I understood and felt that not all the things that were told about the USSR were true. Listening to the tales of my grandmothers and grandfathers, I got the impression that the years of their youth had been very hard.

In 1990, as the Perestroika got under way, I was seized by the desire to paint my Soviet childhood and the crumbling USSR.

Thus was this series born: the toppling of the Dzerzhinsky monument, the struggle for survival of the impoverished masses, the brainwashing of the naive segment of the populace by the speeches of the fiery demagogues who had come out of the woodwork and managed to attract a lot of followers. This was the genesis of the painting "Tasting the Zhirinovsky Cake" – people, who look more like mindless embryos, descend on balloons and come crawling in order to attach themselves to an edible sculpture of Zhirinovsky, which resembles a pink cake and looks delicious. On another painting, these same "embryos" are riding on a dragon symbolizing the USSR, and look very proud because of it. On the third painting, the slightly changed embryos are demolishing the Dzershinzky monument, relishing their newfound impunity; my beloved, native, long-suffering city of Moscow is revolving like a carousel around them.